If I could only keep one
By Rafael Ortiz, Mexico City ·
Confession: if a fire alarm went off at home and I could grab one watch, it would be a GMT-Master II. Probably this one.
Let me say why, because it isn't the hype. It's the movement. The 3285 is the flyer every other GMT gets measured against. When you land, you pull the crown one click and jump the local hour hand forward or back in one-hour steps, and the date follows it in both directions, even past midnight. The 24-hour hand stays put on home time and the seconds keep running. Land in Tokyo after fourteen hours, set it while the jet bridge is still connecting, and Mexico City is still right there on the 24-hour hand. Seventy hours of reserve means it'll still be ticking if I leave it on the hotel desk for a two-night layover and wear something else.
The blue and black ceramic bezel is sharp without being loud, and the action is firm and clicky, 24 positions, which is what I want when I'm using it for a third zone (my crew schedulers live on Zulu, my family lives on Central time, my body lives somewhere in between). Ceramic doesn't fade in the sun the way the old aluminum inserts did, so it will look like this in twenty years.
The 40 mm by 12 mm case slips under a uniform cuff with no fuss. 100 meters, closed caseback, steel bracelet with 20 mm lugs. The black dial is about as legible as a dial can get, the Chromalight lume glows blue and holds on well into the night, and the cyclops over the date is love-it-or-hate-it. I love it, because at 4 a.m. a magnified date is one less thing to squint at.
Now for what's wrong. The polished center links on the bracelet will scratch in the first week of airport security trays, and while the Easylink extension is handy, I'd like finer adjustment for the hours when your wrist swells at altitude. And the elephant in the room: at a list price of 10,900 to 11,350 dollars it's a fair deal, but walking out of a boutique with one at list is another story. That isn't the watch's fault. It's still real, and it's why I tell most friends to try a Tudor first and come back if an allocation phone call ever arrives.
Me, I'd wait. Pero sí, I'd wait.